Two microbiome challenges launched this week with a common goal: evaluate and advance the ability of computational methods to accurately detect known microbial strains in metagenomic samples.

Both Challenges are great opportunities for the community to come together to advance research and for members in this group to test out their microbiome tools.

The Mosaic Community Challenge: Strains #2, hosted by Janssen Research & Development, LLC, aims to speed the translation of microbiome science into novel products by tracking the presence of certain known strains in a sample. It is critical to accurately determine the type and quantity of microbes in a sample at the strain-level in order to bring safe and effective products to market, and to precisely monitor their status within the human body. Insights from the Challenge will provide an objective comparison of the performance of different tools. Participants can submit multiple entries and see immediate results of their performance throughout the Challenge using the Mosaic Platform.

The CFSAN Pathogen Detection Challenge, hosted by precisionFDA, asks participants to develop and use bioinformatics pipelines to identify the types and distribution of Salmonella strains in each of several metagenomics samples. This type of technology will expedite determining the source of foodborne illness. As the food safety community moves to metagenomic sequencing, bioinformatics algorithms must be developed to detect pathogens amongst a mix of organisms sequenced directly from a sample. This Challenge was designed as the first step towards this goal.